As our awareness of cultural, literary, and other forms of diversity
changes, so does our understanding of American literature. Our individual
and communal lives can derive identity by studying and perhaps furthering
and remaking that diversity. America, the "brave new world,"
has inspired quite different visions about experience heard in oral as
well as written sources of literature: poetry, speeches; changing cultural
experience named and known through literary forms; invention of new forms
to meet challenges and a not always receptive audience; conflicting ideas
and principles derived from differing historical missions and mythic beliefs;
ongoing issues or traditions of an author emerging in one time and significant
ever since. We can ask how authors and speakers carry on old forms and
invent new ones to understand changing historical circumstances and the
significance of nature and how these forms both clarify and explore American
conditions; to see, with Emerson, that "the experience of each new
age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its
poet."

Text:

The Heath Anthology of American Literature.Vol. 1, 1990.

Assignments:

Aug. 27-29

Discovery, Projections, and Myth

Myth and culture, orality and literature

Colonial period to 1700: Overview 3-21

Native American traditions 22-25

Navajo 40-52

Iroquois 56-59

Tsimshian 64-66

Sept. 3-5

Discovering a "New World" 67-69

Columbus 69-80 [Quincentennial]

Virgin of Guadalupe 81-89

Pueblo Indian Revolt 52-55

Spanish Reconquest 431-40

Quiz

Sept. 10

Writing Assignment 1: How does the literature assigned reflect
a conflict between Indians and Europeans? Support the view expressed with
sources drawn from readings and class discussion.

Sept. 10-24

Settling and reimagining New England

Augustinian and other beliefs 146-48

Bradford 218-27 Mather 408-20

Winthrop 188-99, 204-10 Williams 232-43

Bradstreet 256-61 (Father), 269-73

Hawthorne ScarletLetter

Young Goodman Brown, Mrs. Hutchinson, My Kinsman Major Molineux

Edwards A Divine and Supernatural Light

Quiz 9124

Sept. 26

Writing Assignment 2. Select one point of ambiguity in Hawthorne and
consider (a) its differing possible interpretations to a Winthrop and (b)
to a Hawthorne. Justify the differences on the basis of their beliefs.

Writing Assignment 3: Define the concept of "rights" as interpreted
in Franklin and Douglass or in Melville. Consider the concept in
both actual and potential ways as the authors evidently do. Include in
essay reference to one of the following writers concerned about rights:
Child, Weld, Grimke, Garnet, Chesnutt, Stowe, Seattle, Ridge, or selected.

Writing Assignment 4: Select a subject of interest to you and three
of the above writers and contrast in the form of poetry with annotation
and commentary or in the form of an essay. Base part of work upon a scholarly
article (from AmericanLiterature or other similar journal).

FINAL EXAMINATION

EVALUATION AND ORIENTATION

"Nations, like children, discover who they are by telling what
they have done."

-- Peter Gay

"I would like to know the co-authors of my narrative."
-- Alasdair MacIntyre

SomeExpectations: Each author and tradition can be a
co-author:

Defining personal and cultural identities means seeing how my story
is unique and still part of living regional, cultural, and world narratives
and traditions. That means I have to know many to know one, and know one
well to recognize the many.

Discovering greatness in others is a way of seeing greatness in myself
and in the future.

Choosing what matters means testing experience according to possible
stories, so that I can discern an emerging pattern and project its outcome;
however, I can also project an outcome and then build toward it.

Any live tradition is one whose future is in doubt which also means
it is in conflict -- a timeless source of metaphor, narrative, and action;
effective technique evokes a live tradition, imagines possible worlds.

Recognizing how my story is embedded in these others and how those are
constructs of still others is part of our expectation; that, to extend
Fuller's hope, "the sexes [and each `other'] should not only correspond
to and appreciate, but prophesy to one another." These first Americans
have invited us to find our own voices, prophesy our identities.